How we rank movies

Every "Top 10" on this site is produced the same way, with the same rules. No pay-for-play, no recency bias, no mystery. Here is the whole method.

1. A weighted rating, not a raw score

We rank films by a weighted blend of IMDb and TMDb ratingsthat also accounts for how many people voted — the same statistical approach IMDb uses for its Top 250. A film rated 8.4 by two hundred thousand voters ranks above a film rated 8.6 by four hundred, because a rating only means much once enough people are behind it. Concretely: the fewer votes a film has, the more its score is pulled toward the catalog average; the more votes, the more its own rating counts.

2. Eligibility rules

To keep lists honest, a film must clear a few bars before it can appear in a ranking:

• It needs a minimum number of votes — obscure films with a handful of enthusiastic ratings don't outrank widely-seen classics.
• Unreleased films are excluded, and current-year releases need substantially more votes before we trust their early scores.
• Concert films, making-of specials and event broadcasts are excluded — they aren't feature films.

3. Editorial picks, clearly bounded

On a small number of flagship lists our editors pin a film to a specific position — for example, a genre-defining classic that raw scores undervalue. Pinned picks are deliberate, rare, and never paid. Every other slot on every list comes from the weighted rating alone.

4. Honest age ratings, always

Each movie page shows the film's official certification(PG-13, R, U/A, 15 and so on) together with which country's rating system it comes from, plus a plain-English explanation of what that certificate means. When we add editorial parental notes, they're our own honest guidance. When data is missing we say"Not rated / data unavailable" — we never invent an age rating or parental details. See age ratings explained.

5. Where the data comes from

Ratings, posters, release data and certifications come fromTMDb; IMDb rating numbers are sourced via the OMDb API. Data is refreshed when the site is rebuilt, so rankings shift as public ratings evolve. All written summaries, intros and notes are our own original work.

Questions or corrections? Get in touch — we'd genuinely like to hear them.